CHOLA
Royal Academy of Arts
11th November 2006-25th February 2007
Displayed against gallery walls of a glowing Indian red, the sacred bronze images stand ‘still and still moving’* in their glass cases. In an aureole of flames, Shiva Naturaga-Lord of the Dance-poses on one foot, the other lifted in a gesture of liberation. One hand points upwards as a sign of submission and the serpent coiled about his wrist is a sign of his power over death and worldly attachment. Nearby the youthful Krishna is poised in dance on the hood of the serpent demon Kaliya, his left hand holding aloft the serpent’s tail and his right hand offering protection. In addition to statues of the deities there are images of the saints who followed Shiva, traveling from temple to temple in Southern India, singing hymns, extracts from which are inscribed high on the gallery walls. This exhibition brings together in a tastefully minimalist setting, some of the finest examples of bronze casting from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, during the Chola period, many of which have found their way into collections in America.
The small holes that can be seen in the bases of the bronze statues are a reminder that traditionally they would have been carried on poles through the city streets at festivals, perhaps to be ritually bathed in the river, anointed with milk and honey and, if belonging to a royal temple, also with jewels, to render them all the more auspicious. Today there are still such processions, accompanied by drums and conches. The jostling crowds though they may hardly see the image, which is painted, clothed in rich silks and almost smothered in garlands, feel they are encountering the manifestation of a living god. A god who attracted by the beauty of the form of his image and the priestly chanting of mantras has been enticed to take up temporary residence within.
In our culture we do not have the sense that a god can appear among us in the market place. We are left to admire the work of anonymous sculptors who saw themselves not as creators or innovators but as craftsmen attempting to express an already existing order. After undergoing ritual purification and rites requesting that materials and tools be guided by inner vision, the artist’s role was to be faithful to a common aesthetic and iconographical language. It is said that some of the images in this exhibition dating from the 10th and 11th centuries, can no longer be matched for their fineness of detail, even by craftsmen in South India today who are casting bronze statues in the traditional way.
Suggested further reading: Elgood H M. 1999 Hinduism and the Religious Arts. Cassells: London
*The Four Quartets T.S. Eliot